Kitty Kate's Story

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#1 Apr 17 - 6AM
Kitty Kate
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Kitty Kate's Story

I've Wised Up

I have come so far in the last two years since I left my husband. I met him when I was only 18, just one month out of high school. He seemed to have all the answers I was looking for in life. He always had an answer and he believed he had the "right" answer. He knew better and more than anyone else. I was so young, so naive and so trusting at 18. I was shy, sensitive and unsure of myself. I didn't know who I was.

Looking back, the signs about him were obvious, but I was just too inexperienced to know. In the beginning, he frequently spoke about how people were projecting into him and thought he was controlling but this was just their own "darkness." He judged people harshly but I blindly thought nothing of it. He used his spirituality as a mask and to manipulate people and situations around him so that he would never be unmasked. He would gain information about people and use it as a way to put them in their place if he felt exposed or vulnerable. He usually lied about his age (he was twice as old as me, but looked like he was 35 or so) and told me not to tell anyone his true age, my family didn't even know until I divorced him. To me, the age difference didn't matter but he insisted that nobody know.

Nobody in my family liked him. They could see right through him. They thought he was arrogant and a master manipulative. He subtly manipulated me away from my family because he considered them a threat to his reality and I believed his every word. I thought my relationship with him was the most perfect thing. I was totally wrapped up in him that I cut myself off from my family and any friends I had. I didn't think I needed anything or anyone else. He was funny, charismatic, creative (a talented musician) and very knowledgeable. I thought it was meant to be, that we were destined to be together and I thought how lucky I was to meet someone so early on in life. We had so much in common. Our taste in music and art and our observations about life were very similar. We both loved to travel. In a way he was good for me. He challenged me to be more physically active and disciplined. He was a teacher/mentor to me.

Some people thought he was strange. I thought I understood him and other people just misunderstood him. I though he was different and eccentric. I wanted to naturally be understanding and compassionate.

We moved in together 2 years after we met. I wanted to take my time because I was so young, though I still moved from my parent's house straight to his. A few months later my father died from ALS. At this time, I was already depressed and didn't know why, I couldn't figure out why I was so unhappy. I was drawn to movies depicting women unwittingly and slowly being poisoned. I related to them but didn't know why. I watched The Country Girl which is about a codependent relationship starring Grace Kelly. Something inside of me told me that I was in a situation similar to hers but I couldn't put my finger on it. The reality of my situation hadn't surfaced but on some level I knew. I chose to live in denial because I thought I needed him and I wanted it to be perfect, I wanted it to be real.

I grew up in a household that wasn't emotionally supportive and I had NEVER owned or validated my own feelings. This made it very convenient for him because I already doubted myself and he could reinforce that doubt when he saw fit. I was very numb emotionally throughout the entire relationship. I wasn't allowed to express my own thoughts or feelings if they were threatening to him. I was like a zombie and I thought there was something wrong with me and he reinforced this over and over. My feelings meant nothing to him and that was normal and comfortable for me because that was what I knew. He would blame me for being so numb yet punish me for expressing my true feelings so it was a lose/lose situation.

A year after we moved in together I decided that I wanted to go back to College and maybe get my own apartment or live with my mom. I even briefly moved back in with my mom after my Father's death. I felt I needed to find myself and experience life on my own though I was a bit scared to do it. He told me that my mom was trying to get me to stay at home because she's selfish and wants me to help her. He told me that he didn't see me growing as an individual if I moved back in with my mom. He convinced me to not go to school because it wasn't necessary and too expensive. I believed him but deep inside, I hated myself for it. I was going against what I truly wanted. At the same time, I wanted to be with him. I felt like he knew me better than anyone else and we could relate. It was fun and exhilarating to be with him. He was the only person I wanted to be with and I had no girlfriends and I rarely saw my family.

I remember when I broke the news to my mom what we were going to be married. My mom cried and sobbed. He told me she was upset because she was lonely and this meant that I wouldn't be living with her. I believed him. I always believed him. My total reality was built on his perceptions and reality. I know now how much my mom loves me and that she cried for me and the life I had chosen with him. She had first lost a husband and then a child. My sister had a dream soon after with my dad in it. He told her to watch out for me or I'd be lost forever. At the time I rolled my eyes when I heard her dream. I thought my family was crazy but in reality I was the crazy one!

I remember one poignant event when I became pregnant for the second time. We had decided to have an abortion both times because we didn't want children. The abortions were painful both physically and emotionally. I remember after going to the clinic, he took me out to lunch and I was crying at the table asking him to please get a vasectomy because I didn't want to go through this again. He wouldn't even look at me. He continued to read his paper and shook his head and said no, I'm not getting one. He wouldn't acknowledge my pain, my tears and I died a little bit more that day. Later on, he said he didn't even know I was crying and that I should have been more emphatic and expressive. It was always me that should, could or shouldn't have.

Years went by. I took on more and more responsibility. I did all the cooking, cleaning and laundry. I even took care of my husband's aging father and working full time. He seemed content to let me take on everything. I wanted to allow him the opportunity to fully work on his career as a musician though he never seemed to make it happen. He couldn't even get a single song recorded while we were married. It was very frustrating for me because his songs were so good, his melodies so beautiful and catchy. I even began to play in his band with him. He liked the image of a blonde bass player and I naturally loved to play music. Something always blocked his way. A deep insecurity that I tried to mend for him prevented him from truly getting out there and going for it. Later on, I realized he had a deep shame that he constantly tried to cover.

My reality changed rapidly when I began to fall in love with a co-worker. Never had I had such deep feelings for another person. It was a shock to feel for the first time ever and the feelings were pouring out of me. It wasn't my husband who cheated, but me. It is totally out of my character. My husband was devoted unlike many narcissists. I loved this new man because he took responsibility for his feelings and my world opened up. I began to realize that neither my husband nor I took responsibility in life. My husband would continually blame me for his feelings and deflect his inadequacies onto me in order achieve some kind of control in life. He would find ways to blame me. I melted into my new love and didn't care about the consequences. I subconsciously was getting back at my husband for being so controlling over the years and I wanted to leave him but was too afraid to say so because I thought the consequences would be too great. My husband had an emotional and mental hold over me. He knew what to say and do to put me in a corner, intimidate me and control my behavior. So I escaped in an affair with this new man in secret.

I was confused. Why was I doing this? Cheating? I felt so guilty. I questioned my marriage and finally left my husband. I started seeing a therapist. I told my husband that I wanted to start seeing other people and he told me how wrong and awful I was. It was misguided of me to want to jump into another relationship to be honest. I was looking for a way out and this seemed like a way out. My guilt drove me back and I moved back in with my husband. I wanted to do the right thing. I thought it was my destiny to be with my husband and I needed to accept it. Things seemed to go ok for awhile until my husband began to feel threatened with me seeing a therapist. He tried to discredit my therapist by calling him a "western psychologist" who basically had no depth or spiritual perspective. Later I realized that he mainly didn't like me talking about him. Appearances meant everything to him. One morning, he left his tape recorder rolling and taped me while he was gone. His controlling behavior began to become more noticeable as he felt himself losing control of me.

He only hit me once. One night after going to bed I was confused and I spoke about leaving him. I said I was having feelings of leaving and I wasn't sure why. He became upset and told me to leave. He pushed me out of bed with his feet. As I was getting my things together and putting my shoes on he came up from behind me and blind sided me hard with a pillow. I know, it was only a pillow but it was the blunt force of it and the anger expressed it in that mattered. It could have been his fist for all he cared. He told me that he hit me as punishment for not being honest with him in the past. The thing was he would punish me consistently for being honest, he liked lies better.

One early morning around 4 A.M. my husband shook me awake. He had my phone in his hand. he said he just "happened" to be looking at my phone to check the weather when he saw that a mutual friend had called me. It didn't make sense, his phone was right next to him on the bed side table and mine was in my purse on the other side of the room. Why wouldn't he just look at his own phone to check the weather? (Later I realized that he was never honest about his intentions and would make up excuses for his controlling behavior.) He was concerned that she had called me before calling him. I had spoken to her about getting an astrological reading from her and she was going to get back with me. We had spoken earlier and set up an appointment. When we spoke, I couldn't help but break down and cry because she mentioned that my husband was adamant that he know the details of our appointment. He had left a message on her machine but she felt that she should speak with me first. This is when I began to really feel my husband closing in and the crust of disillusion began to break. I was starting to see him for what he truly was and what he was doing. The more he closed in, the more I wanted to run. I then realized that he felt threatened by her. He didn't want her putting ideas in my head. That morning, he began to belittle her abilities. He called her sexist. He was trying to diminish her so that she had no credibility because she was a threat to him. This woman was and is a neutral, compassionate and wise healer and I thought that he had no reason to discredit her other than for his own gain. I then had an amazing experience. I had a break into REALITY. EVERY and anything he had ever done to manipulate me over the ten years I had been with him surfaced. It hit me hard. The realization set in and the crust finally broke. But I had no reality of my own to support it. My world and perceptions were based on his way of thinking and reality. I had a complete melt down. Images flooded my head. My husband as a devious serpent with a long split tongue and fiery eyes filled my head. I felt absolutely crazy. I didn't know what to trust or who to trust because I had never established that trust within myself. I never learned who I was. I couldn't even trust myself or my own reality because I never established it.
After my husband went to sleep, I decided to take a shower to try to calm down. I managed to keep it together while I was in the presence of my husband, but in the shower I broke down. I cried and cried. I was on the edge of crazy. Images were whirling around my head and I was spinning. I was physically shaking and I wanted to self destruct. The reality that just hit me was too much to bear and I had a very strong vision of slashing my wrists and I almost did. I almost fell off the edge. Instead at the last moment I pulled myself together. I was then scared of my husband. I was protecting myself and my sanity. I didn't think I could be in the same room with this man another minute without having a psychotic break. Everything he did was for his own gain. Everything he did was to manipulate something or someone. He didn't know any better, this was and is all he knows. If he is not manipulating something then he is not in control and life has no meaning for him. I made up a story that I had to go get menstrual pads at the store. He believed me and I drove away in a snow storm. I called my new love and I called my mom and sister. I drove to my sister's house.

This is when I left him pretty much for good. I had to have surgery for two hernias and I planned on recovering at my sisters. My mom took me to get the surgery taken care of. When the nurse woke me up after surgery, she told me that my husband was waiting for me in the waiting room and I panicked. I began to cry. Later on I found out she had mistaken me for someone else. He never showed up because I made a point of not telling him when and where it would be.

So recovery began. Physically, mentally and spiritually at the same time. At first I was in shock like PTSD. I would just stare and feel numb in disbelief with my life followed by a severe crying spell. The pain was so intense I would have rather died, but I didn't and my mom was of great support to me. Turns out my father was a bit of a narcissist and she had experienced a similar thing. Who knew? My father, yes he was emotionally abusive and controlling. He had bipolar and would become violent sometimes, mostly breaking objects around the house. And I had thought he and my husband were nothing alike.

I began to tell my therapist about my past with my husband and my therapist said I was married to a closet narcissist. I didn't know what that meant and just ignored him but he kept consistently saying it over the course of our visits. I became annoyed and I actually defended my husband. It took me awhile to completely crawl from underneath my husband's spell. I also wanted our relationship to be real. I was holding onto it. I didn't want to believe that it was a sham. I wanted and longed for the past. We seemed so right for each other. But it began to slowly sink in and make sense once I read about narcissism. It took me a long time to admit to myself what kind of relationship I had been in and it took even longer before I could voice it and tell someone else. During this time, every time I happened to be with my husband and he would exhibit narcissistic traits, I would cry and cry not wanting to believe it, hoping it wasn't true. If only he wasn't this way, everything in our relationship would be fine. I even thought I could change him. If only I did this or that, but it doesn't work that way. I eventually divorced him but it was difficult because he tried every scheme to get me to come back. He tried to blame me and make me feel guilty. He tried to make me feel sorry for him and he would play the victim hoping I would save him. He used intimidation tactics. He would lie about people I care about to try to tarnish their records and discredit them. It was an up and down roller coaster for awhile. Not to mention that we work together too which makes it very difficult for both of us.

There were many more bumps in the road before I managed to get to where I am today. This last decision I made to cut him off entirely has helped immensely. I have been doing the steps outlined here before I even knew about them and I came to the conclusion that I had to cut him off. I got in this pattern of thinking we could be friends and then he would punish me for something, then I would cut him off. He then would charm his way back in and I would miss our talks and we would become friends again and he would take anything he could get. Though if he was feeling weak or I wasn't doing what he wanted me to be doing then he would find a reason to blame me and in every conversation he seemed to turn it around on me. He called me abusive because I would be friends with him and then cut him off. This was just business as usual for him. He wanted to continue our dysfunction and didn't understand why I was cutting him off. He would lie and try to stir up trouble around work. At the end of our friendship stages, I would fall into a deep depression. He would get me to doubt myself again and my reality. I was always doing something to him or being thoughtless or socially naive. He would ridicule me and though I got to a point where I was laughing at him, over time it took its toll. So even though I wish we could have been friends, I realized that it can never be and the farther away I get from him, the clearer I see who he is and I don't want to be his friend. He plays mind games all the time. I feel free and clear without him. It is liberating. It is now time to focus on me and developing my character as a woman.

Apr 28 - 3PM
Canada
Canada's picture

"He would ridicule me and

Apr 17 - 7AM
Wallace
Wallace's picture

Kitty Kate

Apr 28 - 1AM (Reply to #2)
Kitty Kate
Kitty Kate's picture

Thank you <3